In a 4G network of related technology, when a user is in an idle state and there exists downlink traffic data to be sent to the user, a core network initiate a paging process directly. When the user is in a connection state and a network side has downlink traffic data to send, the core network may send the data via a user equipment (User Equipment, UE) specific bearer to an evolved node B (evolved Node B, eNB) to which a UE belongs, and then the eNB may send the data to the user through a downlink dedicated data scheduling transmission. In a light connection state, the core network sends the downlink traffic data to a base station to which the core network considers the UE belongs; however, the user equipment may not be accessing to the base station and consequently the network side can not send the data to the UE through a dedicated data downlink scheduling transmission.
As shown in FIG. 1, a current paging mechanism of long term evolution (Long Term Evolution, LTE) mainly has two functions: (1) the core network pages a specific user, (2) the core network initiates a paging when announcing system information updating or information of emergency turnaround warning system/commercial mobile alert system (Emergency Turnaround Warning System/Commercial Mobile Alert System, ETWS/CMAS) and so on.
Specifically, (1) indicates a paging for a specific user. The paging is triggered by the core network and its procedure is described as follows.
When the core network searches for a UE in the idle state, a paging process for the UE is triggered directly by a mobility management entity (Mobility Management Entity, MME) and a paging message is sent to an eNB via an SI interface. The eNB calculates, based on information in the paging message, a time instant at which the UE receives the paging message, organize a paging message of an air interface based on a paging content at the SI interface, and sends the paging message to the UE at an air interface paging time instant.
In related technology, when user downlink traffic data arrives, the core network may not trigger a paging process for a user equipment in the connection state; and the core network sends the relevant downlink traffic data to a corresponding base station via a dedicated bearer. For a user equipment in the light connection state, there exist few approaches for the network side to find the UE.